by Denise Mina
He turned his face up and muttered a final quiet prayer: ‘You bloody nasty bastard.’
Mr Kaira had been looking at the screen for thirty seconds, a small smile frozen on his mouth, his forefinger tapping the completely empty desk like a slow pulse. He turned his smile to Omar and his eyes followed slowly. ‘System is slow today,’ he explained and turned back. The light on his face changed to pale blue and he exclaimed a little ‘ah!’ and frowned at the numbers on the screen.
Omar had been coming here since he was ten. The bank was in the west end of the city, past all the halal butchers and the sari and sweet shops, before the university on the hill, right in the middle of student pubs and cafes and second-hand book shops.
Every second week his daddy had brought him here to watch him make his deposits, to speak to Mr Kaira. Mr Kaira, whose oiled hairstyle never came or went from fashion, whose tiny collar stayed about his fat neck, whose smile was never more or less fixed; always a constant. The decor stayed the same: hessian moss-green walls, smoked glass between the counter and Mr Kaira’s office. The chairs had been replaced but only by exact replicas. Before Omar’s time there had been an open counter for service but they had replaced it with a bullet-proof window after a raid.
All their family money was in the Allied Bank of Pakistan, which was silly really because there was only one branch in Glasgow and it was on the other side of the city, but Aamir liked it. The small staff rarely changed and he could always talk to Mr Kaira about his affairs, create accounts for weddings and holidays without having to explain to a stranger. All his friends at Mosque knew that he banked here and Omar thought his father drew a sense of authenticity from it. He was a Ugandan Asian, an African Asian, not an Asian Asian like everyone else in Mosque. Aamir was always an outsider.
Mr Kaira frowned at the blue screen, jotted something on a notepad without looking at his hand and sat back. ‘Mr Anwar, as I told you on the telephone this morning, in the collected accounts of your family is deposited this much.’ He smiled and pushed the pad across to Omar - £43,193.33. ‘Your father is a prudent man.’
Not prudent enough. They would need a loan for a huge amount, much more than the house was worth, more than all the cars. A ransom wasn’t exactly a good investment. Their only hope was that Mr Kaira hadn’t heard about the kidnapping already.
‘Um, Mr Kaira.’ Omar looked at him. Mr Kaira smiled encouragingly. ‘Could I withdraw this money?’
He looked a little shocked. ‘All this money?’
‘It’s for my father. He’s away and he needs it.’
‘I see.’ Mr Kaira didn’t see, the clouds in his eyes made that clear. ‘I see, I see. Your brother would need to countersign for it. The accounts all require two signatories from the partnership.’ Everyone trusted fine upstanding Billal. ‘Would he be willing to do that?’
Omar heard him ask if he was planning to steal it. They all distrusted the next generation, those old guys, especially the youngest sons. ‘Yes, he will sign. The thing is, my father needs a lot more than that. Would you be able to advance us a loan?’
Mr Kaira snorted as if that was impossible. ‘For how much?’
Omar did the calculation, realised he wasn’t going to get a loan for £1,950,000 and balked. ‘Um. I’ll talk to Billal, see what he thinks.’
‘The withdrawals, we will need advance notice of your withdrawals—’
‘No.’ Panic rose from Omar’s guts to his stomach to his throat, blocking his airway, making it hard to breathe. ‘How much notice?’ Omar stood up, gathering the bank papers he had brought with him and shoving them back in the brown envelope.
‘A month on your sister’s wedding fund, a week for the high interest account.’
‘But I need it right away.’
‘Ah, but then you’ll lose all the interest on those accounts.’
‘That’s fine. I need it right away.’ He hurried to the office door but Mr Kaira beat him to it.
‘If your father is in trouble . . .’
‘No. No.’ Omar blinked hard, desperate to get out through the smoked glass door Mr Kaira was blocking with his rotund body.
‘Mr Anwar, I heard about last night. I cannot advance you the money but if I personally can be of any service . . . ?’
Red-eyed, Omar reached around behind him and grabbed the door handle. ‘Thanks.’ He slipped past Mr Kaira and made it to the door, threw it open and stepped out into the street. He felt the cold wind brush past his face, saw a cluster of school kids eating chips across the road.
Omar looked up the hill to the students’ union building and wished, dearly, that he was back at uni, that it was any time but this time, this awful gut-wrenching time.
With a jolt, Omar realized that the bank staff could see him through the door, and Mr Kaira would be watching him, waiting to see what he did next. He turned stiffly and walked off uphill as if he knew where he was going, heading towards the university.
Afraid of meeting anyone he knew Omar took the back streets and lanes, dodging the streets around the mosque in Oakfield Avenue, looking for a place to hide. He passed the fence around Hillhead high school, saw kids inside hanging around the playground, kids dressed like poor gangster rappers, fat teenage girls wearing tight clothes and pixie boots, their conversations over-animated, posturing, attention-seeking. In the street fresh-faced first year students brushed past him, hurrying to classes.
He veered off down a road he knew was lined by houses used by the German department. No one he knew did German. The street was quiet and he dropped his head as he walked along, let his tired shoulders slump.
Aamir would know what to do. He’d have railed and shouted and then told him what to do. Whenever Omar thought about Aamir he imagined him as a small angry mouse in pyjamas. Small because he was small, angry because he was angry all the time, never spoke to any of them but to recriminate or correct, and wearing pyjamas because Aamir was rarely home unless it was time to go to bed. They didn’t need to pay school fees any more, he didn’t need to work a sixteen-hour day. He was avoiding them.
Omar saw his father looking at his spoiled, lucky children, sensed his bewilderment, his disappointment. They expected new clothes and cars and bedrooms of their own, they wanted shoes and food and holidays and iPods. Sadiqa wanted books and new clothes all the time because she was always getting fatter. They didn’t want to pray in the night, they didn’t want to walk anywhere, they didn’t want to work shifts in the smelly wee shop with Johnny Lander telling the same stories over and over about his time in the army. They were private school kids and thought it was humiliating to sit behind a counter, taking shit from alkis and shoplifters and racist fuckwits out in their slippers looking for bottles of ginger and tea bags.
Aamir had been chased out of Uganda and came to Glasgow with nothing behind him. He’d worked as a dustman for two years, taking abuse everyday from colleagues, passing school children, everyone. Finally he opened a shop where someone called him a black bastard at least once a day, where he hid from his frightening new wife and the children when they came. Omar knew these facts, he understood the hardships that had formed his father, but he had never felt the gross injustice of all that had happened to Aamir until now.
He had wandered into a back court surrounded by smelly bin sheds and overgrown gardens. He was one wall away from the university. A white cat skittered away through a hole in a fence. Purposefully, he stepped into a bin shed.
In the dark, dank smell of rotting nappies and mouldy veg, Omar covered his face and sobbed with worry for his hard-done-by daddy.
25
They were dawdling. Bannerman and Morrow strolled from the car park around the station house and along the road as if they had all the time in the world, as if every moment was not a timeframe during which an old man who had worked blamelessly every waking moment of the last thirty years could be killed.
If they had thought about it neither of them would have been quite sure why they lingered in one another’s co
mpany. They didn’t like each other, had fuck all in common, but they had achieved a sort of truce over the day. They were reluctant to lose that in the company of others.
Bannerman spotted the mini supermarket down the road. ‘I need a paper . . .’ he said.
‘No.’ Morrow pushed him towards the yard door. ‘Come on . . .’
Miserably he punched the security code into the numbered pad. The door buzzed and they both stared at it until Morrow sighed and pushed it open. ‘Fucking get in.’
The processing bar was busy with a couple of easy collars having a laugh with the guys on the desk. Morrow and Bannerman kept their heads down and went through to the duty seargeant’s desk. The copper she’d been unkind to about the graffitti scowled when he saw her. For a moment she thought about apologising but decided it would be easier to scowl back.
She typed the code into the CID corridor and they sloped inside, both eyeing MacKechnie’s office. The lights were on but the door shut, as if he was on a phone call or picking his nose. They stepped up the corridor and Morrow tried to peel off and go to their office but Bannerman pinched her sleeve and made her come with him.
MacKechnie called them to come. Bannerman opened the door wide into the corridor and tried to get Morrow to go in first but she held firm. MacKechnie looked up expectantly at Bannerman.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘Omar Anwar wasn’t in . . .’
MacKechnie looked up from his paperwork and saw the look on his face. ‘What is it? Do you want me to guess?’
Bannerman slumped. ‘Omar is Bob. He’s got a business doing import/export to the EU.’
MacKechnie stiffened. ‘Bugger. Carousel VAT fraud? Is that what you’re saying?’
Bannerman shrugged. ‘That would be my supposition . . . We’ve taken his paperwork and his computer hard drive . . . They’re being processed now.’
‘Right . . . right. Do we have to call Fraud right now? Would you say it was that pressing?’ MacKechnie could see the danger of it; the public perception of a department prosecuting a victim of violent crime, the endless paper trails and his officers spending weeks milling in High Court corridors, waiting to be called to give evidence.
‘Well . . . we could see what’s on the hard drive first. It’s just a suspicion, we haven’t really got any evidence . . .’
‘OK,’ he said vaguely. ‘Lab reports are in, Morrow, go and check them out.’
Bannerman turned to her as she left, pleading for her to come back and save him. She grinned and slapped his back. She was glad to get outside the room and shut the door firmly behind her.
In her office someone had carefully stacked hard copies of lab reports, of the fingerprint evidence which had already been gone over with no anomalies found, over the lab reports on the van which turned up squat. She read them again. The tinfoil had opiate residue in it, cut solely with milk powder, no laxatives, no talc, just pure milk. It was unusual. She puzzled over it as she put the Anwars’ answerphone tape into a tape recorder. She made a copy and played it.
Billal answered, they asked for Bob and he handed it over to his brother. The kidnapper asked after Aleesha’s injuries and agreed to phone back at five to make an arrangement for a pick-up. He ended by saying he knew about Omar. She noted the interest in Aleesha, wondering if he knew her or was worried about the charges against him.
She took it into the incident room for transcription. DC Routher was prematurely balding and long overdue a promotion. He was good at paperwork though, efficient, and no one who got him ever wanted to let him go. She gave him the tape. ‘Anyone got a picture of the M8 motor?’
‘Aye.’ He pointed her over to a board of images and notes that MacKechnie had been adding to. In the centre was a big photo of a car. It was grainy, taken from CCTV cameras, enlarged and printed onto copy paper.
Because the cameras were up high on the motorway lights the driver’s face was obscured by the car roof. In the second picture the car was fuller, they could see a front passenger’s thighs and a hand on a knee. A final picture of the car driving back towards the town showed that the chassis was sitting low.
She went back over to Routher. ‘Where did it come off?’
‘Town centre, Charing Cross.’
‘Fuck.’ Charing Cross had seven exits and three broken cameras. The car could have gone anywhere. ‘Lost it?’
‘’Fraid so. The reg is out now anyway. Everyone in the city’s looking for it. If they’re not picked up in the next half hour they must be sitting in a garage somewhere.’
‘Did Bannerman drop in a bag of CCTV tapes from a shop?’
Routher pointed to a small office room across the corridor. She could see Harris in profile through the strip of glass on the door, sitting on a chair, arms crossed, watching the far wall intently. He didn’t look happy.
She walked across the corridor and opened the door. ‘Right?’
Harris didn’t look up. ‘It’s because I said about the DVD, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know why Bannerman loves you enough to give you this, Harris, he just does.’
‘Ma’am, it’s days and days’ worth.’
‘You don’t have to watch it in real time, you can speed it up.’
She looked at the image on the telly. A small man sitting on a stool behind the counter in Aamir’s shop. She’d seen the publicity photo they were releasing to the news, a family snap shot of him three quarters side on, but this man looked smaller, angrier, less sympathetic.
Harris pressed fast forward on the remote and, suddenly, the wee man was wriggling this way and that, getting down, messing with the shelves behind him, sitting back up. Someone came in and bought fags. A figure came in around the counter, got up on the stool next to him, got down, disappeared, came back with two mugs. She squinted and saw that it was Lander. It was a bad quality tape, a crap angle too.
‘My eyes’ll be bleeding in a minute,’ said Harris.
‘Harris, you’re the only man we trust this with,’ she said sarcastically, backing out of the room.
Bannerman shuffled miserably across her path.
‘Is everything turning to shit in front of ye?’
He didn’t answer but smirked at his shoes.
She filled him in on the kidnapper’s call and then, ‘Listen to this: the residue in the tinfoil wrap from the van? This heroin has been cut with milk powder, but only with milk powder. No talc, no ash, nothing extra. Just milk powder. It’s very clean.’
‘So?’
‘Well, if they were only cutting it with a single substance the quantities needed would attract attention. Usually it’s lots of different things.’
‘Is he a cutter then?’
She shrugged. ‘Unlikely because those guys are very undercover, paid for discretion, and they lose their job if they use. More likely he’s got a long habit and gets a custom deal from someone—’
‘I said that. Long term habit, I said that before . . .’ He seemed desperate to have got something right so she let him have it.
‘Maybe he lives with a dealer ? Has a supply or gets it wholesale. Either way he’s well in with dealers.’
‘Cuts it himself?’
‘For himself.’
He looked hopeful. ‘Could this be traceable then?’
Morrow shrugged. ‘Worth a try.’
At half past one Eddy and Pat were still cruising in the car, listening to the radio. Pat turned it up so loud that Eddy couldn’t talk over it. A high-pitched alert signalled from Eddy’s pocket and he pulled over to the side to read it.
Pat could see the text. It was from Eddy’s ex-missus in Manchester. Their youngest daughter was six today. Phone or she’d cut his balls off.
Eddy’s colour changed as he read it and Pat knew if he didn’t get out of the car he’d get the brunt of it.
‘I’ll jump out here,’ he said, throwing the door open to the street.
‘She’s fuckin’—’ Eddy leaned over the seat. ‘Pat, get back in.’
‘No, no.’ P
at backed away from the car, holding the edge of the door. ‘Give ye privacy to call. Pick me up in half an hour.’ And he slammed the door shut, instantly regretting that he’d left the paper with her picture inside. He looked in at Eddy. A nothing in Reactalite glasses. Small, fat, furious.
Eddy pointed straight down to the ground and mouthed angrily, ‘Here?’
‘In half an hour.’ Pat turned away so that Eddy couldn’t argue, walking quickly away down the road. He kept moving at the same pace until he saw the silver car draw past him, down the road and disappear around a corner.
Pat breathed out and looked up, actually excited at the prospect of a half-hour holiday from Eddy. When he saw where he was he almost choked. He was just around the corner from the Vicky. She was just around the corner.
He hurried up, breaking into a jog until he reached the junction and stopped. A low row of newsagents and chip shops on his right but to his left, across the road, loomed the Vicky Infirmary. He struggled to breathe in. He searched his conscience to see if it was true, if he really hadn’t known where he was. He hadn’t: it was as if it was meant.
Outside smokers were huddled in their coats, standing singly or in twos, gazing aimlessly out into the street. Pat stood with his toes over the edge of the pavement, straining, face first towards the passing traffic. He wanted to be there, just a little closer.
Suddenly aware that he might be acting strangely and attract attention, he veered right and went into a newsagent’s shop. He bought the paper again, smiling to himself as he picked a can of juice out of a fridge, and found himself asking for ten Marlboro reds, imagining that it was what she might smoke, if she smoked.
The man behind the counter tried to chat, asking if he had finished his work for the day, but Pat couldn’t hear him. He nodded and paid and left the shop, hurried off across the road, dodging buses and cars, snaking between parked cars. He was grinning as he walked over to the Infirmary and took his place among the line-up under the smokers’ shelter.
An old man in a green bunnet and tweed coat was standing next to him, watching Pat as he took out his packet of ten from his pocket and unwrapped the clear cellophane.